America and Grapes of Wrath

When the Grapes of Wrath was first published, it was attacked for advertising socialism, which many people believed was very “un-American”. However, the reason that the book enjoyed soaring popularity in the midst of controversy and even nowadays lies not only in its literary values, but in the fact that the book fundamentally deals with the very ideas that the country was built upon: that America is the land of opportunity, free will, and common people.

One of the major themes of the Grapes of Wrath is the questioning of whether everyone is granted with the same opportunity. America has, for a long time, served as a symbol of an equal opportunity; it was the land of self-made men, where there were no restrictions on social class or social barriers. However, the America of 1950s described in the story is incongruent with the values. The story mainly centers around the clashes over between men of institutions and farmers to seek opportunities. However, people from the institutions, such as banks, forcefully steal the opportunities of farmers, here represented as the “land”. There is also a clear social hierarchy in the story between farmers and men from the banks, with farmers helpless in the presence of such powerful institutions. Through such descriptions, Steinbeck is questioning whether America still can grant/guarantee every individual’s equality of opportunity.

Free will is also an important principle in the story, because it is what leads the farmers to overcome their difficulties. At the time in the country, a notion known as the “American Dream” was prevalent, which held that in America, as long as an individual had the will to work hard, he could achieve what he desired. Such ideas served as the major source of hope for the characters. Even when farmers had their lands taken away, they still had hopes to find another opportunity in California, which symbolzied as their “promised land”. Such value is represented by the turtle